Petaluma City Schools Board of Trustees Selects Davina Goldwasser as Next Superintendent of Petaluma City Schools
The Petaluma City Schools Board of Education has selected Davina Goldwasser as the District’s next Superintendent, and approved her contract in open session at the meeting of the board on May 26, 2026.
This decision follows a comprehensive, community-driven search process focused on identifying a visionary, equity-driven educational leader committed to student success. Throughout the process, the Board prioritized candidates with strong instructional expertise, organizational leadership, fiscal stewardship, and a deep commitment to improving outcomes for all students, especially those who have been historically underserved.
Ms. Goldwasser brings more than 25 years of experience in public education, serving as a teacher, district leader, and elected school board trustee in Marin County. Most recently, she has served as Assistant Superintendent of High Schools and College and Career Readiness in the San Francisco Unified School District, where she oversees instructional leadership and college and career readiness programs supporting more than 16,000 students.
A fluent Spanish speaker, Ms. Goldwasser also brings a strong personal connection to public education as a first-generation college graduate and the daughter of immigrant parents.
The Board is excited about the leadership, experience, and vision she will bring to Petaluma City Schools and looks forward to introducing her more fully to the community in the coming weeks.
The Board of Education extends its gratitude to the entire PCS community for its ongoing support, partnership, and engagement throughout this important transition process. The strength of Petaluma City Schools comes from its students, staff, families, and community, and the Board deeply appreciates the work happening each day across the district.
Mady Cloud
Board President
Petaluma City Schools
The Board is working with Human Capital Enterprises to conduct a rigorous, nationwide search. The Board will seek, receive, and review all input from the community; review all candidate applications; interview candidates determined by the Board; and select the new Superintendent.
The Board has set a timeline to recruit, interview, and hire the new Superintendent of Schools to begin their term on July 1, 2026.
The Board has solicited public input on the characteristics, experience, and skills desired in the next superintendent through an online survey and in-person focus group sessions.
All information gathered through focus groups and the Superintendent Search Survey has been compiled, summarized, and incorporated into the “Next Superintendent Criteria”, which can be seen through the link on the right hand side of this page.
By law, the Board is solely responsible for hiring the new Superintendent, The Board will seek, receive, and consider all input from the community, review all applications, interview those candidates determined by the Board, and select the new Superintendent.
All application materials, including the names of applicants and any other personally identifiable information, are confidential.
Yes, in many places. Recent searches in Medford, Beaverton, Portland, Los Gatos, San Francisco, and Salem-Keizer all employed a similar path.
1. Quality of Pool
Top-tier, experienced superintendent candidates are shying away from superintendent search processes in which their names are surfaced publicly prior to selection. This has always been problematic – but in the current era, where superintendents of great talent are in higher demand than ever before – top-drawer candidates are increasingly selective. Many successful superintendents will opt out of a search process where they will be publicly identified as finalists for a job that they may not ultimately get. Recent superintendent searches from districts where finalists’ names are publicly revealed evidence that experienced superintendents are opting out of this kind of a process.
2. Quality of Community Feedback
Although there is sometimes a tendency to think that more feedback is better, in actuality that’s not our experience. Large-scale qualitative feedback is very difficult –if not impossible– to turn into usable feedback for the Board in the short turnaround time that is required. Other areas of concern, such as feedback from stakeholders who may have only watched a single candidate – or who have a strong bias toward a candidate and a large network of friends and colleagues – creates some complexities. Quantitative feedback on finalists in a Superintendent search is of some, but limited, value.
3. Equity
In searches where there is a large-scale amount of feedback, it can feel overwhelming to Board Directors to make sense of the various voices providing feedback. When that happens, it is not atypical that we, human beings that we are, elevate the voices most proximate to us to a higher level of influence: our spouses and partners; our neighbors; our friends; our colleagues. Members of our close circles will have observed finalist processes and they will have their opinions that they eagerly share with us. Because their opinions matter to us, we are influenced by them.
But in a search where a finite number of individuals are providing feedback – individuals who for the most part are not identifiable and represent a broad and diverse array of stakeholders – the Board will truly hear the diverse voices of a representative sample of the community.
Updates regarding the Superintendent search process will be posted here. The Board will also provide updates at its regularly scheduled board meetings and future press releases. If you have questions about the search process or timeline we invite you to connect with us at communications@petk12.org.
